This month, Hồ Chí Minh and senior staff assess accomplishments and plan for the future. While convinced that Vietnam must be reunited through their efforts, and happy with Viet Cong progress during recent months, they know there will be no rapid victory. Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung (who is ready, in Phạm Văn Đồng’s words, “to fight to the last Vietnamese”) wish to avoid large-scale conflict with the United States; it is clear that Lyndon Johnson plans to continue the U.S. involvement, perhaps deploying as many as 100,000 U.S. combat troops in Vietnam. Viet Minh veteran Colonel Bùi Tín explores the Hồ Chí Minh Trail for the Hanoi leadership and after five months of covert inspection in the South finds the Viet Cong poorly organized, lacking in leadership and unprepared for a long campaign. Partly due to his report, Hanoi decides to start sending regular army troops into the South.
A plan to change three of South Vietnam’s key military commands has been killed by political maneuvering within the ruling Military Revolutionary Council. Well-informed military sources said today that the plan was opposed by Major General Tôn Thất Đính, Minister of Security and commander of the III Corps, whose troops surround Saigon. General Đính is widely regarded as an ambitious and audacious officer who was long loyal to President Ngô Đình Diệm. His participation in the coup in which President Diệm was killed was vital because of the troops he controlled. This control gave him important leverage within the military council. Some of General Đính’s colleagues in the council are known to be wary of his ambitions, but are reported to have decided against challenging his power directly now. This was the first real test of strength within the ruling council, and qualified military sources said General Đính apparently emerged the victor. Although he is probably not in a position to impose his policies on the junta, General Đính is nevertheless in a position to block moves by others.
Sixty South Vietnamese civil guards, with their wives and children, battle waves of communist guerrillas until every man in the outpost is dead or wounded. About 20 women and children die in the Red attack at Bầu Cao fort, near Tây Ninh. Despite the slaughter, part of the fort is held throughout the night, until reinforcements arrive at noon. The Viet Cong attackers carry away their dead, leaving no bodies, but it is believed the defenders exact a toll of at least 50 Red lives.
More than 1,000 U.S. servicemen stationed in South Vietnam will start leaving for home Tuesday, according to General Paul D. Harkins, commander of U.S. forces there.
President Johnson will confer with the leaders of Great Britain, West Germany, and Italy for wide ranging policy discussions in the next three months, the White House announced today. The conferences will take place in the United States. The first will be with Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany, who will pay a “working visit” to Johnson’s ranch near Johnson City, Texas, on December 27 and 28.
On January 14 and 15, Johnson will be host to Italy’s President Antonio Segni in Washington. Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home of Britain will visit Washington on February 12 and 13. The conferences were described by Andrew Hatcher, acting White House press secretary, as “wide ranging discussions of major issues of common interest to the United States and these major allies.” The invitations were understood to represent a strong emphasis by Johnson of his support of the Atlantic alliance and to indicate his desire to establish and maintain close relations with the leaders of those nations.
After a brief meeting between Johnson and French President Charles de Gaulle last week, when the French leader was in Washington for the funeral of President Kennedy, it was announced that De Gaulle would return early next year for detailed conferences. The announcement was amended later by the White House to say that it was the President’s “hope and expectation” to meet with de Gaulle, but there was no commitment. Today, Hatcher said such a visit is under discussion in “normal diplomatic channels,” but nothing definite has been decided.
The Soviet press today insinuates that Lee Harvey Oswald was an American spy during his time in the Soviet Union, that he was “a dupe of right-wing elements,” that those elements had President Kennedy murdered, and had Oswald silenced in the aftermath. It is almost exactly the narrative that will be adopted by certain U.S. conspiracy theorists in coming years. Oswald’s infatuation with communism and pro-Cuban activities are ignored.
Queen Elizabeth today led Britain in a day of homage to the memory of America’s late President Kennedy. The queen and the queen mother, sat in the front row of the nave at a special morning service held in Windsor castle’s medieval, white stone, St. George’s chapel, home of Britain’s chivalric Order of the Garter. Behind the two queens, both in black, the congregation of about 900 persons included 350 United States army, navy, and air force men with their wives, who came from all parts of Britain, several Americans at Oxford and Cambridge, and members of the Los Angeles Chamber orchestra, who might have played if a key member hadn’t fallen ill.
The ideological split between the Soviet Union and Communist China widened at a world peace meeting in Warsaw today, and the pro-Peking delegation from Albania protested an earlier tribute to President Kennedy. “We must once again protest from this rostrum the tribute paid to the late President of the United States,” Dhimiter Shuteriqui, an Albanian delegate, told a session of the Moscow-backed World Council of Peace. “It was cynicism,” he said. “It is cynical to beautify United States imperialism, to beautify (Kennedy’s) biography.”
Shuteriqui referred, apparently, to an incident last Thursday when French Delegate Jacques Madaule suggested that the delegates observe a minute of silence in Kennedy’s honor. Tang-ming Chao of China interrupted Madaule. He read a statement calling on delegates to honor those opposed to “United States imperialism” rather than the late President. Shuteriqui, who also echoed the Peking line that the partial nuclear test ban treaty was “a threat to peace,” was loudly applauded by the Chinese delegates and their allies. Other delegates were silent.
In the Venezuelan presidential election, Raúl Leoni of the Democratic Action party defeated Rafael Caldera and five other challengers. Defying pro-Cuban terrorists, their bombs and bullets, 3 million Venezuelans go to the polls to elect a president and congress. In a gun battle in downtown Caracas between terrorists and the armed forces, Carl Warner, a United Press International photographer, is wounded. Voting is heavy throughout the nation. Early returns give Raul Leoni, an anti-communist, the lead.
The government of Premier-designate Aldo Moro has bogged down in apparent arguments over cabinet posts.
Thousands of Cubans began registering in Castro’s new compulsory military draft, taking an oath to ‘repel any Yankee imperialist aggression.”
Foreign Minister Auguste Mabika-Kalinda of the former Belgian Congo was arrested. Auguste Mabika-Kalinda, the Congo’s foreign minister, is dismissed from office and arrested. The government accuses him of “an attempt against the security of the state.” The principal disclosure is that Mabika-Kalinda provided Moise Tshombe, exiled former president of Katanga, with a Congolese passport without consulting others in the government. Premier Cyrille Adoula takes charge of the Congo’s foreign policy.
In voting in Senegal, incumbent president Léopold Sédar Senghor of the Senegalese Progressive Union was elected unopposed, and his party won all 80 seats with 94.2% of the vote. Ten persons were killed and six wounded when opposition elements and police exchanged shots during the first Senegalese general elections since independence
Nagaland became the 16th state of India.
Malcolm X described the Kennedy assassination as a case of America’s “chickens coming home to roost”, resulting in his suspension on December 4, and eventual excommunication from the Nation of Islam. He said the killing was “merely a case of chickens coming home to roost” in direct defiance of an order from Elijah Muhammad, not to comment on the matter during its immediate aftermath. This insubordination deepened a growing rift between the men, resulting in Malcolm’s excommunication and which led him to adopt more moderate views as a convert to Sunni Islam, a second name change (to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), and his founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
Mrs. John F. Kennedy and her two children flew back to Washington tonight from a Thanksgiving reunion with the family of her assassinated husband at the Kennedy family compound at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Mrs. Kennedy, Caroline, 6, and John Jr., 3, landed in an air force jet at National airport after a flight from Barnstable municipal airport in Hyannis, and drove directly to the White House. They were accompanied on the flight by Mrs. Kennedy’s sister, Mrs. Stanislaus Radziwill, two attendants, and a nurse.
A large amount of luggage and two dogs were loaded on the plane shortly before the state police-escorted car bringing Mrs. Kennedy stopped at the apron where the plane was parked. The former President’s sister, Eunice, and her husband, Sargent Shriver, and Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Smith boarded the family plane, Caroline, for New York City and Washington. Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in black with a blue-black veil, looked neither left nor right as she climbed the ramp to the plane. Two secret service men followed her inside.
President Johnson and his family paid homage at the grave of President Kennedy today, joining thousands who ignored bitter winds to visit Arlington national cemetery. Johnson, his wife, Lady Bird, and their two daughters, Lynda Bird, 19. and Lucy Baines, 16, made the unannounced trip across the Potomac River to the grave after attending services in St. Mark’s Episcopal church near the Capitol. The President is a member of the Christian church, but his wife has attended St. Mark’s for some time. All the family took communion. Then, accompanied by secret service agents, they drove to Arlington, passed several thousand others waiting to go to the Kennedy grave, and walked 200 to 300 yards across the rolling slopes of the graveyard of national heroes. Johnson stepped inside a white picket fence around the grave and placed a bouquet of red roses on a mound of others there. He stood, head bowed, for almost a minute, then rejoined his family. The Johnsons drove to the White House from the cemetery.
Secret service agents arrest a discharged army engineer corpsman on a charge of threatening the life of President Johnson. Robert A. Weatherington, 40, with a record of erratic behavior, is quoted as saying that unless some files involving him in a dispute with three Washington banks were released President Johnson would be killed.
Failure of Congress to act on appropriation bills has upset fiscal operations of the government, causing many officials to work late to bring order out of disorder.
The Harris Survey reports that the public is in favor of the administration’s proposal to cut taxes as initiated by the late President Kennedy by well over 2 to 1.
Four male friends of Karyn Kucpinet, Hollywood starlet and daughter of Irv Kupcinet, Chicago newspaper columnist, have been asked to take lie detector tests in the investigation of her murder in Los Angeles.
The New York attorney general will disclose a black market in Broadway theater tickets next week. Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz plans to disclose kickbacks made from costume and scenery makers to producers and others. The disclosures of ticket scalping, said to involve millions of dollars annually, will be made at hearings opening December 10 in New York City.
Wendell Scott became the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR race, finishing in first place in the Grand National Series Jacksonville 200 at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Florida for the third race of the 1964 Grand National Series.
Major League owners agree to allow the expansion clubs 4 protected first-year players who can be optioned to the minors without being subject to a draft.
NFL Football:
Johnny Unitas passed for three touchdowns today as he led the Baltimore Colts to a 36—20 victory over the Washington Redskins in a National Football League game. Unitas kept the Redskins in a constant state of confusion with his play-calling. He connected on 24 of 37 passes for 355 yards and ran for key yardage on several occasions. Norm Snead, the Redskin quarterback, hit on 18 of 33 passes for 332 yards. Unitas sent the Colts into a 16—7 halftime lead with second quarter touchdown passes of 30 yards to John Mackey and 2 yards to Ray Berry. The victory was Baltimore’s sixth against six losses. Washington has a 3-9 won-lost record. Washington moved 80 yards in four plays in the third quarter to make the score 16—13. Dick James ran around end from the 3 for the score after a 62-yard pass to Don Bosseler had put the Redskins in scoring position. Unitas put the Colts in command in the fourth quarter as he led them to two quick touchdowns. He set up the first with a 10-yard run to the 10 after he was trapped trying to pass. Then he sent Jerry Hill through the middle for 10 yards and the score. Minutes later, Unitas led the Colts 75 yards in nine plays. This time it was a 28-yard toss to Jimmy Orr that scored the touchdown.
The St. Louis Cardinals, who were chiefly responsible for creating the close race in the National Football League’s Eastern Conference by beating the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants the last two Sundays, ran out of gas today. A 24—10 defeat at the hands of the Browns before a disappointed crowd of 32,531 all but wiped out St. Louis’s championship hopes. The Browns produced their best performance in six weeks, or ever since they were shocked by the Giants in Cleveland October 27. They had won their first six games under Blanton Collier, their new coach, including one in New York, The loss to the Giants was followed by losses to Pittsburgh and St. Louis and unimpressive victories over Philadelphia and Dallas, considered to be weak teams. This time, however, Cleveland simply overpowered the Cardinals on the running of Jimmy Brown, the effective passing of Frank Ryan and the complete stifling of the St. Louis passing attack. The Browns gained more than twice as much yardage as the Cardinals, 403 to 198, and were in command, 21—3, by halftime. Brown’s performance, once again, was remarkable. He gained 179 yards rushing (in 29 tries), exactly the same amount the Cardinals amassed on the ground. In the process, Brown broke his own record for yardage gained in one season. His total is 1,677 yards in 250 attempts. He set the old record in 1958 with 1,527 yards in 257 attempts. In those days, of course, 12 games constituted the entire schedule.
Roman Gabriel’s high velocity| passes set up three touchdowns yesterday that gave the Los Angeles Rams a 21—17 National Football League victory over San Francisco. It was the third straight triumph for the improving Rams and the fifth in seven games since the 6-4, 225-pound Gabriel took over at quarterback. Los Angeles had to hold off a determined San Francisco second half effort. The deciding points came six minutes into the third quarter. A Gabriel pass to Carroll Dale for 49 yards put the Rams on the five and two plays later Art Perkins pushed over from the one, making the score 21—10. Abe Woodson intercepted a Gabriel pass and ran it back 61 yards to set up the last 49er touchdown in the fourth period. Bobby Waters passed 14 yards to J. D. Smith for the score. It was Waters’ first play of the game. He remained at quarterback but threw two interceptions that finished the 49er chances.
Bill Wade’s 8-yard touchdown pass to Joe Marconi after the inspired Minnesota Vikings had fumbled away an apparent victory enabled the Chicago Bears to gain a 17—17 tie today and remain atop the Western Division standing in the National Football League. It was the second successive 17—17 deadlock for the Bears, who last Sunday tied the Pittsburgh Steelers. Chicago, nearly an upset victim of the substitute quarterbacking of Ron VanderKelen, now holds the division lead with a 9-1-2 won-lost-tied record, a half game ahead of Green Bay. The Packers have a 9-2-1 mark. entered the game with only two minutes gone when the Viking star, Fran Tarkenton, was injured. VanderKelen directed the Vikings brilliantly and threw his first pro touchdown pass to give Minnesota a 17—3 lead in the second quarter. Tarkenton did not re-enter the game until the Bears had made the score 17—17 midway in the fourth period. The Bears got the big break of the game when Tommy Mason fumbled and Roosevelt Taylor recovered for Chicago on the Viking 31. Two plays later, Wade found Marconi wide open in the end zone. Bob Jenck’s conversion tied the score.
Y. A. Tittle set a National Football League record for touchdown passes yesterday in lifting the New York Giants to an uphill 34—27 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. New York’s triumph kept the Giants in a tie for the NFL’s Eastern Division lead with the Cleveland Browns. Harried by a terrific pass rush in the first half, when Cornell Green intercepted two of his throws and turned them into touchdowns, Tittle came back to guide the Giants to 20 points in the last half. His nine-yard shot to Frank Gifford and a 17-yard scoring throw to Del Shofner gave him the career record for touchdown passes. He now has 197 — one more than the record set by Bobby Layne. The balding 38-year-old Tittle passed New York into position for one touchdown, tossing nine yards to Gifford; his passing set up the third New York touchdown, which he made himself with a one-yard smash; his passing set up a field goal and his scoring throw to Shofner was the payoff. Don Chandler kicked two field goals, one for 53 yards — a Giants’ club record. Tittle, who passed for 220 yards during the game, had three passes intercepted in the first half during which Larry Stephens and Guy Reese put a vicious rush on the aging quarterback of the Giants. Dallas couldn’t cash in on one of them when Frank Clarke fumbled a Meredith pass on the New York 17 and Erich Barnes gathered in the ball. Marsh ran 40 yards to set up the first Dallas touchdown. Meredith’s passing led to the third.
A 24-yard field goal by Lou Michaels with 40 seconds remaining in the game, capped a fourth quarter Pittsburgh surge and gave the Steelers a 20—20 tie with Philadelphia today in a wild National Football League game. The tie, the second between the teams this season and the third for Pittsburgh, kept the Steelers in the running for the Eastern Conference crown. They have won six games and lost three. Michaels’s field goal came after Ed Brown had passed the Steelers from their own 21 to the Eagles’ 16. There the drive stalled. Brown, who had four passes intercepted during the game, finally found the range in the fourth quarter when he hit on scoring tosses of 57 and 8 yards to Gary Ballman, an end. The Steelers came close to another touchdown on the final play of the second quarter when Buddy Dial made a fine catch of a Brown pass and fell out of bounds on the Eagles’ 2-yard-line. However, the clock ran out on the play, which covered 55 yards. Philadelphia got its two touchdowns within 40 seconds in the second period. The first came on a 24-yard pass from King Hill to Pete Retzlaff and was set up when Dave Lloyd, a linebacker, intercepted a Brown pass. The second was set up when Ballman fumbled the ensuing kickoff on the Pittsburgh 14 and Lee Roy Caffey recovered. Tim Brown scored on a 14-yard dash over left tackle.
Baltimore Colts 36, Washington Redskins 20
Cleveland Browns 24, St. Louis Cardinals 10
Los Angeles Rams 21, San Francisco 49ers 17
Minnesota Vikings 17, Chicago Bears 17
New York Giants 34, Dallas Cowboys 27
Philadelphia Eagles 20, Pittsburgh Steelers 20
AFL Football:
Babe Parilli, taunted by a chant that he be removed from the game, accounted for two third quarter touchdowns today as he led the Boston Patriots to a 17—7 victory over the Buffalo Bills. The Patriots, trailing after Cookie Gilchrist’s second-quarter touchdown plunge for the Bills, scored 14 points in the third period and added a 43-yard against-the-wind field goal by Gino Cappeletti in the fourth. Parilli passed for the first Boston touchdown and scored the second himself on a 2-yard keeper play. His 44-yard scoring pitch to Larry Garron and Cappelletti’s conversion tied the score at 7—7 early in the third quarter. It was just four minutes later that Parilli swung around his own left end to score. A 63-yard pass completion to Art Graham, the day’s longest play, had set up the touchdown. A small group of the Fenway Park fans chanted for Boston’s reserve quarterback, Tom Yewcic, to replace Parilli late in the first half after Parilli had completed only six of 16 passes for 47 yards. Yewcic appeared briefly, but Parilli then returned.
The New York Jets accomplished something yesterday that no other team had been able to do in the four-year history of the American Football League. They blanked the defending champions of the league, the Kansas City Chiefs, 17—0, before 18,824 chilled fans in the Polo Grounds. The paying attendance was 11,615, and the remainder consisted of youngsters and other guests. The Chiefs, who were the Dallas Texans for three years, had gone through 52 regular season games and the 1962 championship contest and always had got on the scoreboard. But the Jets of Coach Weeb Ewbank turned in one of the best defensive games of the season in gaining their fifth victory against five losses and a tie. The Jets took the lead in the second quarter after a frustrating first period. In the opening 15 minutes, they did not get into enemy territory until Dee Mackey caught Dick Wood’s pass on the Chief 47 just before the teams changed goals. New York began to roll in the second quarter and took the lead at 5:17 of the period on Wood’s 20-yard touchdown pass to Don Maynard. The Jet flanker beat the defender, Duane Wood, in the corner of the end zone and completed Wood’s 18th touchdown pass of the season. Dick Guesman converted.
Keith Lincoln and Paul Lowe took advantage of Houston Oiler defensive weaknesses today to pace the San Diego Chargers to a 27—0 victory in a game between the division leaders of the American Football League. The triumph gave the Chargers a two-game lead in the Western Division. Houston’s loss, its first shutout since 1960, dropped the Oilers into a first place tie with Boston in the Eastern Division. New York trails by half a game, with the Oilers and Patriots meeting next week. Lincoln, who gained 102 yards, crashed through the middle on a 15-yard draw play to give San Diego a 7—0 first-quarter lead. He set up the touchdown with runs of 7 and 13 yards. San Diego increased its lead to 24—0 on 42 and 20-yard field goals by George Blair and a 2-yard scoring run by Lowe.
Buffalo Bills 7, Boston Patriots 17
Kansas City Chiefs 0, New York Jets 17
Houston Oilers 0, San Diego Chargers 27
Born:
Nathalie Lambert, Canadian short-track speed skater (Olympic gold, 3,000m relay, 1992; World Championships gold, overall, 1991, 1993, 1994), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Greg Harris, MLB pitcher (San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins), in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Billy Thompson, NBA small forward (NBA Champions-Lakers, 1987; Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors), in Camden, New Jersey.
Tom Baugh, NFL center (Kansas City Chiefs, Cleveland Browns), in Chicago, Illinois.
Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lankan cricketer and politician, in Gampaha, Ceylon (Sri Lanka).
History Diaries 